AfrEA 2007 – Fourth
Annual AfrEA Conference
January 17 to 21 2007, Niamey, Niger (West
Africa)
The fourth conference of the African Evaluation
Association will be held from 15 to 21 January 2007, in Niamey,
Niger, on the theme:
Evaluate Development, Develop Evaluation
A Pathway to Africa’s Future |
Evaluer le Développement, Développer
l’Evaluation
un Maillage porteur d’avenir pour l’Afrique |
Evaluate Development, Develop Evaluation
a Pathway to Africa’s Future
The Niamey conference is one in a series of activities
by AfrEA for the period 2004-2006. AfrEA, an inter-African organisation,
is working to promote monitoring and evaluation, improving the
quality of evaluations and the application of the results. The
conference will bring together a broad range of participants from
all over the world: government representatives, decision makers,
parliamentarians, development partners, researchers, practitioners,
networks, associations, etc.
The purpose of the conference is to strengthen
capacity in monitoring and evaluation in order to improve policy
development and programme performance in Africa. It will culminate
in a joint communiqué from African national leaders, the
Niamey Declaration. This declaration will set up the future of
evaluation in Africa and promote the use of the African Evaluation
Guidelines (AEG).
| Four priority areas
are derived from the conference theme: |
| |
| i) |
Evaluation of Development
in Africa, Practices and Challenges: to discuss the object
and ways in which evaluation can provide the achievement of
development goals (WHAT); |
| |
| ii) |
Quality of evaluation
in Africa: to discuss the methods (HOW) and the use (WHY); |
| |
| iii) |
Capacity building
in Evaluation: to discuss the challenges that lie ahead in
terms of Evaluation capacity building (WHO); |
| iv) |
Governance, Evaluation
and Development challenges in Africa: to discuss the relations
between evaluation and governance. |
| |
| Hosted by ReNSE (Réseau
Nigérien de Suivi Evaluation, the Nigerien M&E
Network, the conference will aim to: |
| |
| • |
Broaden public debate
on the practice of evaluation and its impact on human development
in Africa, especially in poverty reduction and the fostering
of good governance. |
| |
| • |
Create awareness
of the decisive nature of monitoring and evaluation in public
development policies and strategies. |
| |
| • |
Endow the African evaluation community
with specific skills in monitoring and evaluation
(concepts, methods, procedures, etc.) in order to contribute
to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). |
| |
| • |
Improve the management
of evaluation missions, internally and vis-à-vis decision-makers,
planners, heads of public and private enterprises and major
development partners. |
| |
| • |
To take lessons from international
experiences in the area of monitoring and evaluation
in developing better evaluation practices in Africa. |
| |
To address the
above objectives, a variety of topics will be explored,
including: Ways in which evaluation can provide the achievement
of development goals; Relations between evaluation and governance;
Use and quality of evaluation in Africa; and Challenges
that lie ahead in terms of evaluation capacity building.
The conference is expected to have a major impact in the
building of an Evaluation culture in Africa. In particular,
it is expected that: |
| |
| I. |
African national leaders will
adopt the “Niamey Declaration” which will highlight
their commitment and engagement to promote evaluation as a
tool to strengthen democracy/governance in their respective
countries. |
| |
| II. |
The conference participants will
further develop their competencies as evaluation practitioners
and managers, in order to strengthen the evaluation function
in their organisations and societies. |
| |
| III. |
The conference participants will
be better equipped to use evaluation as a way of accelerating
the achievements of local, national, regional and global development
goals, to reduce poverty. |
| |
The
conference will be preceded by pre-conference Professional
Development Workshops scheduled for 15 and 16 January 2007.
These workshops will be aimed at updating the knowledge
base and practice of M&E in Africa and internationally.
The official conference opening session will be a plenary
that will be held on 17 January, paving way for a host of
other sessions.
Each plenary session will be organised as
a panel to enable speakers and participants to enjoy fruitful
interaction and to discuss the main themes of the conference.
The thematic sessions are intended to, * contribute to reflection
on the themes and sub-themes of the plenary sessions, *
define new guidelines in M&E in terms of vision, methods
and tools, and * make recommendations and proposals to stakeholders
in the areas of development and evaluation.
The Conference will also discuss the formal
constitution of AfrEA, and the revised version of the AfrEA
norms and standards – the African Evaluation Guidelines
(AEG) – for the adoption of the delegates.
The AfrEA 2007 conference in Niamey will
also provide opportunity for exhibitions and social events.
For more information, please go to: |
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| http://66.201.108.198/afrea/content/index.cfm?navID=18&itemID=776 |
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